“Yeah, where to now, Dad?” Juliana asked. “Alaska?”
“Kazakhstan, probably,” Jane said.
“Yeah, Dad,” Eddie said. “Do we need to brush up on our Mongolian now?”
“Hold up, wise guys, would you please?” I said. “Where’s Mary Catherine?”
“Here I am,” she said, coming into the kitchen. “What is it? Come on. What’s the news on the Batphone? Lay it on us. We can take it.”
“Exactly,” Ricky said. “We’ve been out here in Nowhereland for eight months, Dad. We can take anything.”
I let out a breath. My, my, was everybody pissed at me all of a sudden. Getting kicked by Touchdown would have been less of an assault.
“It’s nothing, OK?” I said. “Some people wanted my advice on a case. That’s it. That’s the big mystery. So don’t worry about it. Situation normal. How are the chickens doing, Chrissy? How’s Homer? Any eggs today?”
“ ‘Advice on a case,’ my posterior,” Seamus said. “Spill it.”
“The FBI wants me. They want me back on the Perrine case. There have been a number of new incidents throughout the country, and for some reason, they think I need to be on the case. But I told them that my job is to be here with you guys. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Wait a second, Dad,” my eldest girl, Juliana, said. “What are you talking about? Perrine is the guy who forced us all to come out here, isn’t he? You get him, we go home?”
“She’s right, Dad,” Brian said. “Perrine wants to hurt us. He’s the one making us hide. If they can’t find him, then you’re going to have to be the one to do it. It’s actually a good idea. Once you get him, we all get our lives back.”
“And this will all have been a strange dream,” Eddie said.
“It’s not as simple as that,” I said.
“It’s not?” Seamus said. “Listen, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Michael, but you’ve been about as useful as a … a …”
“NYPD detective on a cattle farm?” Ricky suggested.
“Exactly. Or that rusting hay rake on the porch,” Seamus said. “Ever since we got here, you’ve been walking around, mumbling to yourself. And, frankly, your moping around is flat-out depressing for everyone involved. We love you, Mike, but get the heck out of here, would you?”
I had to admit, they had a point. Emily herself had told me that the investigation had stalled. Maybe I really could get it going in the right direction. The fact that Perrine was trying to kill me and my family was certainly strong motivation. As was the fact that once he was taken care of, we really could get our lives back.
“Wow,” I said, staring at them all. “I didn’t know how, uh, supportive everyone would be about my leaving. Thanks. I think.”
“Seriously, Mike,” Mary Catherine said. “Of course we don’t want you to go, but we know that you need to do this. You really need to bag this creep. It’s time.”
I stared at my crazy family, shaking my head. It was like I was the subject of an intervention or something. But what was I addicted to? Being a cop? I thought about that. Maybe they weren’t so crazy after all.
“Well, if that’s how you feel, I guess I could be reluctantly persuaded to go back to work. If that’s what you guys want, of course. Because I’m perfectly fine out here, farming and living off the fat of the land.”
That got them going. I smiled at the barrage of eye-rolling boos and Bronx cheers. I guess they knew me pretty well.
Better than I knew myself, that was for sure.
CHAPTER 29
Mary Catherine came into my room with a stack of laundry as I was packing.
“Don’t tell me. The kids called me a cab,” I said as she laid my underwear down on the bed, next to my carry-on.
“Please, Mike. Those kids love you more than life. You know that,” Mary Catherine said. “They’re just frazzled. The one thing in life kids crave is stability, and it’s been about as stable as a house of cards in a wind tunnel lately. Plus, they know how good you are at what you do. They don’t have a single doubt that you’ll be able to find Perrine.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, tucking my shaving kit into a zippered compartment. “I’ll be back by dinner. Don’t forget to leave the porch light on.”
“Well, before you go, I have something to show you,” Mary Catherine said, reaching into the back pocket of her jeans.
When she opened her fist, I saw what looked like a tiny white pebble in the palm of her hand. I grinned. It was a baby tooth.
“Shawna’s eyetooth!” I said, smiling as I held it to the light like a jeweler with a gem. “It finally wiggled free, huh?”
“With a lot of wiggle help from Shawna,” Mary Catherine said, smiling back at me.
“Quick,” I said, opening the closet door. “To the fairy box.”
From the top shelf, I took down a small box. It was an old, plastic Macy’s jewelry box that my wife, Maeve, had painted over with white and gold, with generous amounts of glitter. On its lid was a dainty, smiling fairy with elaborately swirling butterfly wings. I smiled at it. It was just a few strokes, but Maeve had been an artist, in addition to so many other things.
I handed it to Mary Catherine, who held it open as I placed the tiny tooth on the little white silk pillow inside it.
“Make sure she sees it before she puts it under her pillow,” I said. “And don’t try to do the switcheroo until after midnight. You know what an unbelievable skeptic that kid is!”
“Aye, aye, Detective Tooth Fairy,” Mary Catherine said, laughing as she looked at me.
Our eyes met. Mary Catherine and I had gotten closer and closer after she’d become part of our family. But right before we went into hiding, we’d gotten into a huge fight, and that had made things pretty tense. In fact, ever since we’d landed in California, she’d been all business, had kept things strictly professional.
But for a second, as we stood there, looking at each other over the jewelry box, we were suddenly back the way we used to be. It felt good. Better than good. Like suddenly finding something you’d thought you’d lost forever.
“You know,” I said, staring at her, “I don’t have to go, Mary Catherine. I really don’t.”
“Oh, yes, you do, Michael Bennett,” Mary Catherine said, closing the jewelry box shut with a loud snap before leaving the room.
PART TWO
BACK IN THE SADDLE
CHAPTER 30
Two US marshals showed up at the farmhouse less than two hours after I called Emily back with my agreement to join the hunt for Perrine.
I’d met some marshals, since the US Marshals Service was the branch of the Justice Department that ran the witness protection program, but this young team, Agents Leo Piccini and Martha McCarthy, was new to me. They must have had orders to step on it, because after Martha dropped my overnight and duffel into the trunk of the Crown Vic, Leo dropped the hammer.
The best news of all was that after I caught my flight, the marshals would be heading back to the ranch to guard my family. My kids would be getting extra-special, round-the-clock protection while I was gone. Their safety was paramount, the priority for me. I wanted Perrine bad, but my guys came first. If anything ever happened to them while I was away, I didn’t know what I would do.
Leo told me we were headed to a place an hour south-east of Cody’s ranch, along the California-Nevada border, called the Amedee Army Airfield. As we drove, I wondered if Amedee was Indian for end of the world, because the area was hands down the most desolate place I had ever seen in my life. On both sides of the faded two-lane blacktop was nothing but mountain-rimmed scrub desert beneath a sky so huge and bright and blue, it hurt my head.
“Is this where they tested the atom bomb?” I asked as we slowed and turned onto a dirt road.
“No, sir. I believe that was down in New Mexico,” Leo said from behind his aviator shades.
“I knew I should have made a left in Albuquerque,” I mumbled as we bumped along.
We slowed and st
opped about five minutes later. I looked to the left and right for the military airport that was our destination, but there was nothing. No planes, no control tower, no buildings. There was nothing but more desert.
“Um, I thought I was supposed to catch a plane,” I said, scanning the bleak landscape.
The young agents looked at each other, smiling.
“You’re about to,” Agent McCarthy said, opening the door.
“But where’s the … you know, buildings and TSA gropers and everything?” I asked, stepping out and spotting for the first time the macadam runway in front of us.
“That’s at an airport,” the female fed explained as she checked her watch. “This is an airfield.”
“Aha,” I said, pretending like that explained something.
When I turned to her partner for clarification, he was pointing up at the sky.
“Here comes your ride now,” Leo said.
Far in the distance to the east, a plane began to make a whistling descent out of the wild blue yonder. Though unmarked and military charcoal gray, it looked sort of like a corporate jet.
The plane made a wide turn to land from the west. I was almost surprised that the plane didn’t start buzzing me like the crop duster that goes after Cary Grant in North by Northwest.
The sleek, rumbling jet aircraft landed and taxied up, close enough for me to reach out and touch the razorlike edge of its wing. Its jets were rumbling so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself when I thanked the agents who handed me my bags.
Instead of a stewardess, a green-fatigues-clad soldier wearing a beret dropped the door and helped me aboard. As the soldier resealed the door, I could see that the plane’s resemblance to a G6 ended at the steps. Inside, it looked like a cargo plane, with netting and jump seats, and smelled frighteningly like spilled gasoline. A female pilot gave me a wide smile and a thumbs-up from the forward cockpit.
“Can I get you anything, sir?” the soldier asked after he expertly strapped me and my bags to the wall.
Still in a state of shock and awe, I just shook my head as the jets fired and the desert outside the window started to roll.
The soldier didn’t offer me any peanuts or headphones, but he did snap out a large brown paper bag and handed it to me as we left the ground.
“Just in case,” he said.
CHAPTER 31
As we headed south, the friendly soldier-steward told me his name was Larry and that the plane was called a C-26 Metroliner.
What he failed to mention was why I was on a military aircraft, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.
It had been just under an hour when we touched back down to earth. Not bad, considering that Cody’s ranch was almost six hundred miles from LA. Even in a military cargo plane, I decided flying private was the way to go. No one had even once made the suggestion that they wanted to touch my junk.
When I looked out the porthole of a window, not too far off I spotted a couple of parked Chinook cargo helicopters. Where are the Delta and Southwest planes? I wondered. Where are the guys driving the luggage carts? Instead of these usual airport sights, beyond the runway fence were rows of two-story dormitory-style buildings. It looked like we were on some sort of military base.
“I take it this isn’t LAX,” I said to Larry.
“No, sir. We’re at SCLA, Southern Cal Logistics Airport,” he said.
Emily Parker was sitting waiting for me in a Gator XUV, a golf cart on steroids, as Larry dropped the door. She was checking her phone and trying to look all nonchalant, like private jets were the most ho-hum thing in the world to her.
But after I thanked Larry and the pilot and started to walk over, she cracked a smile and started giggling. When she wanted to, Agent Parker could look as steely as the snub-nosed Colt.45 automatic she packed, but when she smiled like that, she looked like the girl you were too afraid to ask to your high school prom. I’d forgotten what a great smile it was. Almost.
“Hey, what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?” she said, elbowing me as I sat. “I told you they wanted you. How does it feel to get the Nancy Pelosi treatment? You’re a real government VIP now.”
“I didn’t fill the barf sack on the ride here, so I guess that’s a start,” I said, dropping my bags in the back of the Gator.
We started to drive. The army MP on duty nodded at us as we came through the airfield gate. Which wasn’t easy, since the young man was trying to look down Emily’s shirt at the same time. On the other side of the fence was a road with the dormlike buildings I’d seen from the plane.
“OK, Parker. Give it up,” I said as we hummed along. “What is all this? I didn’t know I was joining the army. Are we going to the hangar where they have the aliens now? I mean, what’s up with the Area Fifty-One routine? What the heck is going on? What is this place? An air force base?”
“Kind of. It used to be George Air Force Base, but it was mothballed in ’ninety-two. They turned half of it into Southern Cal Logistics, a municipal airport, and kept the other half of it-the dormitories and surrounding area-for multiple military use, mostly training.”
“OK, but why are we here?”
“Let’s get you settled first,” Emily said, swinging into a parking lot.
She took me through a door and up a flight of stairs, and dropped my overnight on a cot in a little room halfway down the hall. She locked the door and handed me a key.
“Are you the RA?” I said, taking it. “Where do I get my meal card? Or do I have to report for boot camp? Help me out.”
“Head’s a couple of doors down, on your left,” she said, all business now. “There’s a general meeting in about an hour. Why don’t we get a bite to eat, and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
CHAPTER 32
Back downstairs, we grabbed a couple of Cokes and plastic-wrapped turkey clubs off a tray in the dormitory’s kitchen. We were taking them outside to a picnic table beside the parking lot when a short, wiry, black-haired man dressed in camo came through the front doors. Though short in stature, he carried himself with a physical grace, like an old-time baseball shortstop.
“Emily,” the soldier said, smiling as he stopped in front of us. “I thought I heard you come in. And you must be Michael Bennett.”
“This is Colonel D’Ambrose, Mike,” Emily said. “He’s in charge of this …”
“Shindig? Fiasco? I haven’t quite figured out what it is myself yet,” D’Ambrose said, shaking my hand. “Have you brought Mike up to speed?”
“Just about to, over lunch.” She smiled.
“Excellent,” D’Ambrose said. “Let me grab some grub and join you.”
“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this until you sign the paperwork,” D’Ambrose said at the picnic table a few minutes later, as he speared some potato salad onto a plastic fork, “but large things are afoot, Mike. Forty-eight hours ago, the president signed a national security directive targeting Perrine as a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. Now, instead of just local and federal law enforcement, my military boys are on board.
“As of seven this morning, the Department of Justice is now working hand in hand with my covert-ops guys, the Navy SEALs and Delta Force, and the airborne-signal intelligence-gathering unit known as Gray Fox, as well as the CIA and NSA.”
I stared at him, taken aback. I’d seen investigations ramped up before, but I’d never worked with the actual military.
“Did this little order suspend posse comitatus?” I asked, squinting at him. “You know, the federal statute that says the military can’t operate within the continental US?”
“They finally eject California from the Union?” the feisty colonel said, smiling.
“The colonel and his men aren’t actually operating on US soil,” Emily said, turning to me. “See, we believe Perrine is hiding somewhere in Mexico. Because of the rampant amount of bribery and corruption in the law enforcement agencies and even the military of our sister republic, the Mexican president has relucta
ntly agreed to let us into Mexico to act as special advisers in the hunt for Perrine.”
“Which is not something the Mexican president is ready to crow about, since it’s an election year,” the colonel added. “Because discretion is mandatory, this base is the military’s rallying point for airborne sorties over the border.”
“OK, I think I’m getting the picture,” I said. “Go on.”
“That’s just one side of the blade,” D’Ambrose said. “Perrine’s people are now operating in LA, so we’re going to be working with the LA FBI and DEA, and the LAPD as well.”
“Don’t forget the Mexican authorities,” Emily said. “The federales, and even CISEN.”
“CISEN?” I asked.
“The Mexican intelligence agency, equivalent to our CIA,” D’Ambrose said.
“Exactly,” said Emily. “We’re going soup to nuts, from street cops to the feds to the intelligence community and the army.”
“In two different countries?” I said, and shook my head.
“Yep,” D’Ambrose said. “Starting to feel my pain now? You don’t speak Spanish, by any chance, do you?”
I nodded and looked up as one of the Chinook helicopters went by close enough to land on the roof of the barracks. Half the napkins we had brought went flying as well.
“This thing is a real mess,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Emily asked. “I thought you’d be pleased. Action is finally being taken. Perrine is being looked at like the international terrorist that he is. You’re not happy that they’re finally going after Perrine in a serious way?”
“It didn’t have to come to all this, Emily. How many years was nothing done about the border? About the cartels? We let this fester. Now things are so bad, we have to bring in the military? It’s a disgrace. Everybody is goddamn asleep at the switch these days.”
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